Profit/Nonprofit Project

This is a project funded by the Social Development Partnerships Program of Human Resources and Social Development Canada.

This project has investigated the current and future role of non-profit organizations within the early learning and child care system in Canada. The project includes literature review, collection of information nationally and internationally, statistical analysis of data from the YBIC! data sets, and interviews with key informants.

Executive Summary of Proposed Project

Non-profit organizations have often been favoured by governments in the delivery of early learning and child care services; they are viewed as superior agents in safeguarding public interests in quality and accountability. However, studies of Canadian early learning and child care services have not yet been able to establish whether non-profit status is
a reliable indicator and determinant of quality of service, or under what conditions this would be true. Further, it is not clear whether the “quality-enhancing” role of non-profit status depends on the particular agencies currently involved and would not be preserved if the provision of early learning and child care services were to be significantly expanded.

This project will investigate the current and potential future role of non-profit organizations in the provision of early learning and child care services. There are four broad objectives:

To clearly identify hypotheses about causal mechanisms and processes determining a distinct role for non-profit organizations in ELCC;

To describe and evaluate the policy perspectives and experiences of Canadian jurisdictions and OECD countries with non-profit and for-profit ELCC services;

To assess, using both simple and sophisticated statistical techniques, the data on the behaviour of non-profits from YBIC!;

To collect significant contextual evidence about the operation of non-profits in Canadian ELCC, and to assess whether these operations are likely to be significantly changed by expansion of the system of ELCC services in Canada

The intended result of the project will be to produce insightful analyses of the current and future role of non-profits in an expanded system of ELCC services. Ultimately this would contribute to system-design decisions of policy makers.